Then there were voices ringing up and down the dark street, and there were happy tears in the mother’s eyes, and Arna had taken Peggy’s face in her two soft-gloved hands and lifted it up and kissed it, and Hazen had swung his little sister up in the air just as of old.  Peggy’s tired feet were dancing for joy.  She was helping Arna take off her things, was carrying her bag upstairs—­would have carried Hazen’s heavy grip, too, only her father took it from her.

“Set the kettle to boil, Peggy,” directed her mother; “then run upstairs and see if Arna wants anything.  We’ll wait supper till the rest come.”

The rest came on the nine o’clock train, such a load of them—­the big, bluff brother-in-law, Mabel, plump and laughing, as always, Minna, elfin and bright-eyed, and sleepy Baby Robin.  Such hugging, such a hubbub of baby talk!  How many things there seemed to be to do for those precious babies right away!

Peggy was here and there and everywhere.  Everything was in joyous confusion.  Supper was to be set on, too.  While the rest ate, Peggy sat by, holding Robin, her own little nephew, and managing at the same time to pick up the things—­napkin, knife, spoon, bread—­that Minna, hilarious with the late hour, flung from her high chair.

It seemed as if they would never be all stowed away for the night.  Some of them wanted pitchers of warm water, some of them pitchers of cold, and the alcohol stove must be brought up for heating the baby’s milk at night.  The house was crowded, too.  Peggy had given up her room to Hazen, and slept on a cot in the sewing room with Minna.

The cot had been enlarged by having three chairs piled with pillows, set along the side.  But Minna preferred to sleep in the middle of the cot, or else across it, her restless little feet pounding at Peggy’s ribs; and Peggy was unused to any bedfellow.

She lay long awake thinking proudly of the children; of Hazen, the tall brother, with his twinkling eyes, his drolleries, his teasing; of graceful Arna who dressed so daintily, talked so cleverly, and had been to college.  Arna was going to send Peggy to college, too—­it was so good of Arna!  But for all Peggy’s admiration for Arna, it was Mabel, the eldest sister, who was the more approachable.  Mabel did not pretend even to as much learning as Peggy had herself; she was happy-go-lucky and sweet-tempered.  Then her husband was a great jolly fellow, with whom it was impossible to be shy, and the babies—­there never were such cunning babies, Peggy thought.  Just here her niece gave her a particularly vicious kick, and Peggy opposed to her train of admiring thoughts, “But I’m so tired.”

It did not seem to Peggy that she had been asleep at all when she was waked with a vigorous pounding on her chest and a shrill little voice in her ear: 

“Ch’is’mus, Ch’is’mus, Ch’is’mus!  It’s mornin’!  It’s Ch’is’mus!”

“Oh, no, it isn’t, Minna!” pleaded Peggy, struggling with sleepiness.  “It’s all dark still.”